The handy counter tells me this is the 650th blog I’ve posted here, and the timing is apt — today is Back to School, the beginning of fall — the publishing season, the work season, the school season. Our local pool is closed, I see the boys’ lunch boxes on the kitchen table, I begin [...]

Writing about the Table of Contents put in mind of the beats, the rhythm, of writing nonfiction. I think one of reasons I decided to take a crack at writing nonfiction, after having been an editor for a decade or so, was that I realized that in working on manuscripts I was getting a good [...]

My first job in children’s books was to rethink, relaunch, and re-edit the Land and People books — the Portraits of the Nations series — for what was then still the Lippincott imprint at Harper & Row. My boss was Robert Warren — an enigmatic, sometimes vexing, guy who was a terrific editor (I was pleased [...]